Thirteenth-century criticism of Aquinas' Aristotelianism

Strong reaction among traditional theologians in Paris and Oxford against the massive introduction of new Aristotelian ideas was still growing at the time Albert, Thomas, and Siger taught and wrote. It culminated in the formal act of condemnation by Bishop Tempier in 1277. For a while the Averroistic trend was halted, and the main target of criticism was Thomas Aquinas. A conception of the soul too closely connected to the body, too near to matter was an offense against the entire Christian tradition, which derived so much from Platonism and Augustine. The criticism also attacked the concept of the potential and agent intellect. It rejected the potential nature of the intellect which received and did not produce cognition, it rejected the effect of sensible species on the intellect, and the independence attributed to human cognition, unassisted by divine illumination.

Reactions to the criticism

Even Thomas' pupils and defenders stepped back in the face of this overwhelming pressure. Giles of Rome, although he basically agreed with Thomas' conception of the potential and agent intellect, described the agent intellect also as a quasi-Avicennian storehouse of pre-empirical knowledge and rules of understanding, conceived of as complete potential knowledge. Godfrey of Fontaines defended Thomas in his Quodlibeta, written between 1285 and 1297, and gave his conception of the soul an even firmer Aristotelian character, but he denied the possibility that phantasmata can be turned into intelligible species by the agent intellect, and indeed eliminated intelligible species altogether as an element of intellective cognition.